


A Door Goes Both Ways

by rashaka



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dark, Domestic Fluff, Drama, Dreams, F/M, Fluff, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 22:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1321564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rashaka/pseuds/rashaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Megstiel Human AU.  It’s domestic, it’s boring, it’s a pedestrian sort of perfect.   Then the dreams start on the summer solstice, and their world unravels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Door Goes Both Ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maidenpool](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=maidenpool).



> Prompt: Human AU where Cas and Meg are best friends and they’re stupidly close and share an apartment and he cooks breakfast on the weekends and the city’s going through a heatwave and sometimes they screw because they don’t have time for dating with their busy work schedules.
> 
> This was written for tumblr on the fly and is unbeta'd, just some fun. AKA watch me take a fluffy prompt and utterly destroy it.

It’s domestic, it’s boring, it’s a pedestrian sort of perfect.  Meg complains endlessly about the cost of cable and netflix and cell phones and DSL but nonethless will cut off the water and heat before she even considers losing the wifi.  Cas works as a bike messenger and spends hours touring the city, observing the people consumed in their private lives like bees in a glass hive.  As roommate situations go, everything gels. They get along, and life is life.

The dreams start on the summer solstice, but the significance of the date is unnoticed by either of them—they only know it’s the same night they make out for the first time. (Well, the second, because they sort of drunkenly made-out at Sam’s birthday party two years before, when they didn’t know each other and weren’t friends.) The summer heat is unbearable and the kiss is sloppy, casual, a spontaneous thank-you from Meg for Cas picking up the fruit she likes from the market.  It’s nothing major, but it’s a change.

Things continue to change.  They kiss more, they mess around, and he even eats her out in the laundry room at the base of their building, but they can’t throw themselves into the joys of discovering a new relationship because there's always something that holds them back. A distraction, a stray thought, a darkness that jumps at the corner of the eye.

Meg gets cold sweats at night, and she wakes in sticky sheets and grimy hair. She has to deliberately remind herself to unclench her teeth, then staggers to the bathroom to lean against the sink and try not to scream.

The dreams get so intense that Cas stops sleeping altogether.  Every time he closes his eyes, all he sees is fire.  Burning, blazing fire, as if falling into the sun. His head aches and a cacophany drowns his hazy mind. He’ll stop in the middle of cutting onions or taping the remote control together to ask if Meg can hear what he hears: endless whispers, and below the whispers a thin, high screetch that never seems to stop.

He takes medication to try helping the insomnia and starts meditating to halt the ringing in his ears.  She begins to work out incessantly, hitting the punching bag until it bleeds and using incense for peaceful dreams at night.

It doesn’t help.  Ever so slowly, they realize they’re going mad.  He loses his job and she stops writing for web news. They survive on the little savings they have because participating in the wider world becomes an agony. They cling to each other now because it’s only in a shared embrace that they find any comfort, any closeness.

By two months since the first night they dreamed (he of light, she of pain), Cas cannot enter the living room or Meg’s workspace because the electronics short out, spark, or flicker on and off.  His cell phone hasn’t worked in weeks. He sits out on the balcony, reads trashy books, watches the city, and tries not to close his eyes.

By three months Meg’s body screams for the physical punishment she puts it through, the endless running and the terrible impacts. She can’t look in mirrors because mirrors lie—they reflect different woman’s face, with black eyes and smoke in her hair.

The first full moon of October finds them bundled together on the roof of their building, naked in a pile of blankets and far away from the pictures that bleed or kitchen appliances that shatter. Even with their arms wrapped up in each other, it's getting harder to feel anything resembling normal.  The sky above them is enormous, brilliant and overwhelming to their eyes where humans only see soft, glowing clouds.

"We’re changing," he says. 

"No," murmurs Meg, and tucks closer into his shoulders.  "We’re changing back."


End file.
